Central High School Archives

February 25, 2015

American History Review

I touched on the dreaded math word problem, stressed out over the rules of grammar, and expressed my intense dislike of cursive writing in earlier posts.

Today we’re going to look at what we were supposed to know in Second Semester American History.

I had Miss Kathryn Sackman and Mrs. Lois K. McKinnis for history. I think the former taught American History, and the latter had World History – or it might have been the other way around. The thing I remember best about Miss Sackman was her jet-black hair.

Nearly got ulcers

Phyllis Hansen commented on another post, “I was so scared of Ms. Sackman I nearly got ulcers in the first month of school, but I developed a great love for history from having had her as a teacher.

In the Class of 1965 reunion bio, Nancy Jenkins Wilson said Miss Sadler and Miss Sackman were her most influential teachers. David Spradling echoed that: “Miss Sackman influenced me the most. She taught me that learning could be fun as well as a challenge.”

Miss Sackman retired in 1972 after 20 years in the Cape school system. Her obituary in the July 8, 1992 Missourian reported that she died on her 87th birthday in 1992. She was the daughter of John Theodore and Barbara Louisa Juden Sackman. Miss Sackman was a graduate of Central High School and Southeast Missouri State University. She did research at Columbia University in New York City and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and received a master’s degree in education from Vanderbilt.

Are you ready for the test?

I broke the page into two pieces to make it easier to read, but you will probably still need to click on the image to make it larger.

“Discuss the date, causes, leaders, events, and results of every war the U.S. has entered since 1865.” A variation says to “Review causes, events, results of each of the following wars: Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War.”

Kids back then had it easy: look how many fewer wars they had to learn. In fact, I’m not sure we ever made it all the way through World War I; I’m positive we didn’t discuss Korea.

Discuss present day problems

“Discuss fully present day problems concerned with: Elections; Education; The Mississippi River; Science; Foreign Policy; The Census; Segregation, labor.”

The problems of the CENSUS ranked right up there with problems of SEGREGATION?

Now that what I used to cover as news has grown enough whiskers that it has become history, I’ve gained a real appreciation for the past. The difference between what we memorized in school and what I find interesting today is discovering His Story and Her Story, not the name of some obscure, long-forgotten treaty, bill or politician.

Tell me the story about Louis Houck’s ghost whistles instead.

January 13, 2015March 18, 2021

Kermit “Moose” Meystedt

Unwelcome announcements are coming faster and faster these days. Brad Brune posted this note on Facebook Monday morning:

KERMIT “MOOSE” MEYSTEDT gone at 69 years of age.
Sorry this is last minute but it was just in Missourian this morning, and apparently few were aware that he was even ill. Remember he is brother to Diane Meystedt Legrand (CHS ’66).

In speaking with his beloved son Jay, he shared that cancer of the liver was only discovered November 15th. Kermit was upbeat and enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family and close friends. All were optimistic. Last Friday night he suddenly experienced some pain and to be safe was admitted to the hospital to have it checked out. He digressed quickly and passed away at 9:45 AM Saturday morning. This happened so quickly that the family is in shock and prefers some privacy to mourn and come to grips with his unexpected loss .

The formal obituary

Kermit J. “Moose” Meystedt, I, 69, of Cape Girardeau, Missouri went to be with his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Saturday, January 10, 2015. He was born in Cape Girardeau July 20, 1945, son to Clarence and Hazel Meystedt.

Moose graduated from Central High School in 1963 and received a Bachelor’s Degree from Southeast Missouri State University in 1967 where he still holds the record for most points scored in a single basketball game, 52 points. He then went on to be drafted by the Kentucky Colonels of the ABA.

Married November 6th, 1970, he faithfully led his family as a husband to Sandy Haney Meystedt of Cape Girardeau; a loving father to Madra (Michael) Jones of Cape Girardeau, Kermit Jay (Gabrielle) Meystedt, II of Cape Girardeau, and Aron (Lauren) Meystedt of Dallas, Texas; and grandfather to Graesen, Anna Clare, Savannah, Liviah, Kermit Jay, III, and he was anxiously awaiting the arrival of grandchild number six.

Moose was an active member of Trinity Lutheran Church in Cape Girardeau and was currently serving on the Board of Elders. Moose and Sandy founded Genesis Transportation in 1982 and retired together June 30, 2012. During that time the Lord used Genesis as an outward expression of their faith in Jesus Christ to provide for countless missions across the United States.

Here’s a link to the formal obituary with a photo.

1963 Girardot

Spring sports were always confusing because they happened after the current year’s Girardot had already gone to press. That meant you were playing catch-up in the next year’s book. (By the way, you can click on all the photos to make them larger.)

The yearbook reported that the varsity basketball team had an outstanding season: The school record for points scored by an individual in a single performance was broken by Kermit Meystedt when he personally accounted for 47 points out of a 98 – 53 victory in the Tigers’ final game against Farmington. Meystedt made second team all district, missing the first team by one vote, while teammate Greg Neihart made honorable mention.

He went on to set a Southeast Missouri State College scoring record of 52 points in a game.

1962 State baseball champs

Kermit was key in getting the final out in the 1962 State tournament finals in St. Louis. The whole story is in the 1963 Girardot, above.

Had a .555 batting average

The 1962 Girardot indicated that Kermit was going to be a force to be reckoned with: The Freshman-Sophomore baseball team went undefeated in 1961, emerging victorious in seven contests. Kermit Meystedt, who played on both the varsity and Freshman-Sophomore team, led the team batting average with a .555 mark.

As the 1962 varsity season got underway, things looked bright for the baseball Tigers. Returning from a 1961 squad, which compiled at 15 – 3 record, were twelve boys. The twelve lettermen included last year’s top three pitchers and two of the top four players in the RBI department. Steve Mosley, Alan Kesterson and Kermit Meystedt were the pitchers, and between them they hurled eight one-run games, seven shut-outs, three one-hitters, and two no-hitters, both pitched by Steve Mosley. The pitching staff had a phenomenal ERA opf 0.395. In the slugging department, Floyd King and Meystedt led.

1961-62 SE Missouri Conference Champions

The Coach’s Comments in the 1962 Girardot pointed out that the Tigers had won the Big Eight and College High Christmas tournaments and city series competition. The only loss in the regular season was to the “powerful Advance Hornets, one of the top Class M teams in the state. The Tigers entered the State Regional with a 21 – 1 record.

You can see Kermit in SEMO college action here.

Oh, and the 1963 Senior Directory mentioned some things about Kermit that most of us probably didn’t know about him. In addition to his sports achievements, he was elected secretary and treasurer of his home room, and he entered the National Poetry Contest.

December 24, 2014February 25, 2021

English Word Problems

After I wrote about Dreaded Word Problems and the nightmares left over from math class, Anola Gill Stowick commented, “Ken, you have given rise to that huge lump in my throat that I thought dissolved sometime in my 40’s. Seriously, these look like the word problems our 5th grade granddaughter brings home when we’re babysitting overnight. I don’t do math, I only do English.”

Well, I’m glad Anola has such fond memories of high school English, because I happened upon this English pocket reference guide at the same time I found the math books. I must have held onto it as my form of throwing salt over my shoulder to keep the elephants away. (To see what that means, go to the bottom of this post.)

Experimental English

I was in what much have been some kind of experimental English class. We learned unconventional names for the parts of speech. All I remember was that one of them was called a “2-ing word.”

I don’t have a clue a 2-ing word is, but it must have been important enough that it stuck with me.

Looking at the book, I can figure out that “subject” probably meant “noun,” and “predicate” might translate to “verb. Once we got beyond those basics, though, I was in the weeds.

“Predictive Nominatives (sometimes divided into Predicate Noun and Predicate Pronoun)” is NOT an English phrase I can ever recall using. Maybe SOME folks would divide those things up, but I was basically, “can’t we all get along?” kind of guy not prone to either long or short division (because that sounded too much like math class).

You can click on the photos to make them larger if you REALLY want to revisit those days. Anola, I’m talking to you.

This REALLY made me tense

Pages 22 and 23 made me tense, and it’s not because it “indicated the time of the action.” My head was swimming with Present Perfect, Past Perfect and Future Perfect tenses. I mean, what made them so all-fired perfect? Can’t we get by with Pretty Close Tense?

Item 108? I didn’t even know we were ALLOWED to conjugate when I was in high school. That must have been what the kids in the non-2-ing word class were up to.

I got decent grades in writing

The crazy thing about it was that I got good grades in English when it came to actually writing stuff, and I worked on newspaper copy desks where I had to whip reporters’ stories into readable form.

If I kicked back a story, I didn’t tell the reporter that he had an incomplete throckmartin in the story about the couple caught conjugating on Cherry Hill; I’d just say, “This doesn’t make any sense. Please rewrite it.” It would come back with the throckmartin in the right place, then Rich Renfro would spike the story because “The Missourian doesn’t run stories about people conjugating.”

My writing style was – and is – to string together a bunch of quotes, then drop in a transition sentence or two from time to time to tie them together. I write like I talk, which causes debate coach and speech teacher Ruby Davis to whirl in her grave because I still type “warsh” from time to time.

I’m taking a break

I don’t watch a lot of TV, and when I do, it’s whatever I’ve set the TiVo to record or it’s streaming video. Last night when I went in to unwind, it dawned on me that everything that had been captured was a rerun – some that went back as far as 2010.

The networks are running old shows because nobody is sitting around watching TV at this time of year. My traffic stats show a similar dropoff on the blog, too.

I haven’t missed a day of posting in over a year, and that includes when I’ve been on the road trying to get a weak Internet connection in some No-Tell Motel. I need a break so I can figure out how I’m going to tackle some ambitious projects in 2015, and there’s no better time to do it than when you are distracted by friends and family.

I may post some reruns between now and the first of the year so you don’t go into withdrawals (and so Mother doesn’t nag me about slacking off).

I want to thank those folks who have used the yellow Donate button at the top left of the page. I appreciate your support and wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

December 21, 2014January 7, 2015

The Dreaded Word Problem

$Math book$ Let’s get this out of the way first: I was a lousy math student. I could, with some tutoring from Friend Shari and Dad, grasp the concepts, but I was too interested in debate and photography to waste time (from my perspective) doing the homework.

Geometry was even a bigger bore: I mean, why bother “proving” stuff that had already been “proven.” Come on, let’s plow some new ground here.

We had soft-cover books

$Math book 2$ We folks in the Class of ’65 had “proof” books of the Concepts of Modern Mathematics. They books were printed on regular 8-1/2 x 11″ paper and had a pink heavyweight paper front and back with some kind of black tape binding, if I recall correctly.

By the time Wife Lila’s Class of ’66 got there, the book was a real hardback with Grace Williams’ name on the flyleaf as an author.

Misses Williams and Rixman were good teachers and extraordinarily patient with the likes of me. I mentioned to Shari one day not long ago that I was sure they gave me a higher grade in their classes than I deserved.

Her theory was that if they thought a student had the potential to accomplish something if they ever pulled their act together, they’d cut them some slack rather than give them a low grade that might torpedo their chances to go on to college. I’m not sure I was THAT pitiful, but I appreciate them giving me the benefit of the doubt.

Wife Lila was more diligent

$Math book 5$ My pink-covered books are lost in a box somewhere in my storage shed, but Lila’s are out on a shelf in plain sight. You can tell from her notes that she took the class seriously. (And, seriously enough that she bought the books at the end of the year.) You can click on the images to make them larger, by the way.

This is a management problem

$Math book 3$ The problem read, “Mary and Jane complete a typing task together in 3 hours. If Mary types for 2 hours and Jane 4-1/2 hours, they complete the same task. In how many hours could Jane complete the task working alone?”

Well, this sounds more like a management problem than a math problem.

Is Mary a Chatty Cathy who distracts Jane from her typing duties, which would mean that Jane would be faster alone.
Is Jane a supervisor, who is helping Mary learn the job, so she has to do the work of two?
If Jane is that slow, shouldn’t we fire her and hire another Mary?
What if Jane is the only one in the office who knows how to make good coffee or clear the jam in the copier, and she’s constantly interrupted?

Don’t even get me started on all the unlisted variables in the touring group problem at the bottom of the page.

Who cares how high the tree was?

$Math book 4$ Problem 8 says “During a storm a tree is broken and falls with its tip touching the ground 24 feet from its base. If the top part makes an angle of 30 degrees with the ground, what was the original height of the tree?”

Who CARES how tall the tree was originally? It ain’t never gonna be that tall again.
If I’m going to climb up the trunk to determine the exact angle, why don’t I just measure the stump, then say, “Hey, Joe, catch the end of the tape and tell me how far it is to the tip of the tree.” Height of stump plus the distance from the stump to the tip of the tree equals the original height.
Of course, you’re going to take a productivity hit for the time you take to answer Joe’s question, “Hey, boss, why’d you do that?”
While I’m up there measuring the height of the stump, I might as well drag along a chainsaw to whack off the widowmaker.
If I do that, I don’t even have to throw the tape to Joe: I can just say, “Joe, cut those pieces up into four-foot lengths, then let me know how many there are.” See, simple math, I get the truck loaded and I don’t have to explain anything to Joe.

Maybe THAT’S why Misses Rixman and Williams held out hope for me: they saw me as a budding practical mathematician, not a theoretical one.

Or, more likely, they didn’t want me to repeat their course.